In this era of changing buyer behaviour and disruptive market changes, brands are transforming their engagement models to meet their customers across channels and devices. By Mr. Rajiv Kumar Aggarwal, Founder & CEO, StoreHippo. Gone are the days when buyers expected brands to be available just offline and online. Modern buyers evaluate their chosen brands and products across 4-6 touchpoints on average before making a purchase decision. Brands now need to be present wherever their customers are.

Selling omni channel is the new normal and it is here to stay!

With 91% higher year-on-year customer retention rates along with a 9.5% increase in annual revenue, omnichannel strategies are unlocking new growth opportunities for brands.

By Mr. Rajiv Kumar Aggarwal, Founder & CEO, StoreHippo

Benefits and challenges of Omnichannel Commerce

Adopting the omnichannel route not only sets enterprise brands ahead of their competition but also creates a brand image that resonates with the demands of modern tech-savvy consumers. Building an omnichannel presence ensures a host of benefits for enterprise brands like better customer targeting, revenue from multiple channels, increased customer engagement and retention and data-driven insights for strategic business planning.

However, omnichannel commerce, just like other business models comes with its own set of challenges. Planning a successful business across multiple channels needs detailed planning and superior technology solutions. Running a successful omnichannel business also entails identifying the channel-market combinations that bring the best ROI.

Nailing Omnichannel with Mobile-Ready Solutions and Headless Commerce

Just building an omnichannel brand is no guarantee of success. Enhancing the omnichannel presence with the right tools and technologies is the first step toward setting up an enterprise brand for success. With customer experience being the new-age battleground for brands, it becomes imperative for brands to opt for solutions that help them achieve success through customer satisfaction.

It is here that mobile-ready solutions and headless commerce come to the fore. While mobile commerce solutions ensure you engage customers on their most-liked and used channel, headless commerce enables brands to build connected, personalized and engaging experiences along multiple channels.

Let us delve deeper and see how mobile and headless commerce combination works for enterprise omnichannel brands:

Sell more with Mobile Commerce

With 80% orders coming via the mobile channel, no brand can ignore the importance of having a strong mobile presence. Omnichannel brands looking for better engagement and retention need to strategise their mobile channel with top priority. Research suggests that mobile commerce not only helps in getting better conversions but also helps in converting impulse buyers better. With a variety of mobile-ready touchpoints (mobile sites, PWA stores, apps etc.) in place, omnichannel brands can strategically target customers to get bigger ticket sizes as well as frequent orders from loyal buyers.

Reach Far-Off Markets 

Internet penetration and smartphone usage have exploded manyfold in recent years. Access to the internet has opened up new opportunities for omnichannel brands in the hinterland markets where PWA stores and mobile apps are the only means to register their brand presence. Customers in tier III and beyond cities have been lapping up ecommerce as it gives them access to products which are not easily available in the local markets. Omnichannel brands can enhance their presence and multiply their customer base quickly by leveraging multiple mobile-ready touchpoints in the form of mobile sites and hybrid apps that work seamlessly even on poor or slow internet connections.

Quickly add new customer touchpoints with Headless Architecture

While going omnichannel certainly opens up new revenue and marketing streams for brands, adding new touchpoints quickly and effectively can be a challenge for brands of any size. In monolithic software, adding a new touchpoint means extensive changes at the backend which can cause disruptions at multiple levels. This is where headless commerce can be the saviour for omnichannel brands.

Thanks to the decoupled headless architecture, brands can use the same backend logic and APIs and just add new customer touchpoints rapidly. What’s more, once the brand has its site up and ready, the separated backend and frontend can be worked upon independently without the need for extensive backend overhauls to add new age touchpoints like IoT devices, wearable or social platforms.

Leverage Personalization to Boost Sales

This is the era of hyper-personalization. 80% of online buyers are more likely to buy from brands offering personalized experiences. Personalized shopping cart recommendations influence 92% of buyers to make an online purchase. Customers are ready to pay more and wait longer for their orders if brands offer them a constantly personalized experience across channels.

While personalization certainly pays rich dividends, implementing personalized buyer journeys across multiple channels is no mean task. However, with the flexibility and enhanced creative control of headless architecture developers and marketers can easily implement personalizations at multiple levels. Personalization keeps their customers engaged and sets the cash counters ringing for omnichannel brands.

Out-of-box solutions with Seamless Integrations 

Change is the rule of the ecommerce game with disruption being the tool to win over competitors. Every other day we hear of brands that introduce disruptive business models and rearrange market practices in an unprecedented way. The breakneck speed of changing market dynamics has forced omnichannel brands to think of and implement innovative solutions that have not yet been implemented.

API-based headless architecture is helping omnichannel brands integrate seamlessly with a number of best-in-breed software and service providers. Headless architecture also supports the concept of composable commerce. Composable or modular commerce which helps omnichannel brands in building the most amazing ecommerce solutions by glueing together different softwares and services and leveraging this ecosystem to optimize the operations efficiently across different channels.

Final Thoughts

Ecommerce is rapidly gravitating towards a phygital presence wherein customers are exploring their favourite brands across multiple channels. With competition intensifying in the omnichannel space, brands vying for customer attention need to implement strategies and solutions that makes their brand stand out from the other brands.

Headless commerce combined with mobile-ready solutions enables brands to experiment with new ideas and switch channels incredibly quickly and easily. Building connected and personalized buyer experience across channels goes a long way in building trust and loyalty for the brand which in turn pays rich dividends in the form of repeat orders and word of mouth promotion. Brands planning to grow on multiple channels can rely on headless commerce and mobile-ready solutions to hack growth like never before.